Places

In addition to the ordinary healing powers of a caern, those who simply bathe in the waters of Gish Abai — Garou, human, wolf, or otherwise — can heal one level of lethal or aggravated damage each day. Moreover, the spring has been known to perform more impressive miracles of healing. These impossible feats have included bringing life to the dead, reviving extinct species, and creating new species of animals. It does not perform these miracles often or easily, however.

Perhaps once a decade a gateway opens on the western edge of the caern’s Penumbra and remains open for one lunar month. The gateway guardian, which looks like a winged human made of light and wielding a sword of flame, bars passage to the garden that lies beyond. The presence of this guardian has only fed speculation about the caern’s spiritual significance.

No one has ever bested the gateway guardian in combat, but on a handful of occasions a Garou has persuaded it to bring wondrous healing gifts out of the garden. Only the wisest of all supplicants have won these blessings, and the guardian demanded nearly impossible tasks of them before bestowing them.

While the exact definition of Central Asia varies, my survey is focused on the five ‘stans’ of the former Soviet Union — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Historically, the main human livelihood in the area is herding, since the arid land is largely unsuitable for agriculture. Its millennia along the Silk Road made the region a crossroads for the exchange of ideas, but this central location also made it a battleground between groups of steppe nomads. Periodically, several of these nomadic tribes would unite into a powerful military force — the Huns who invaded Europe, the Wu Hu who attacked China, and the Mongol conquest of much of Eurasia. Many Silent Striders, Shadow Lords, and Stargazers lived among these nomads as great warriors among mortals, and they often had their choice of human Kinfolk as mates. The Red Talons spread their legacy among wolf Kinfolk, and the tribes fought each other often.

When the Soviet Union conquered the area, the Ga­ rou and their human Kinfolk suffered many losses during Stalinist purges. Perhaps even worse than this, the Soviets desecrated or destroyed most of the caerns and other places sacred to the few Garou who survived. The fall of the Soviet Union left several power vacuums in the region that were largely filled by dictators, petty warlords, and crime bosses. It will be many years before democracy truly touches these nations, if ever it arrives at all.

Approximately 40,000 wolves live in these nations (30,000 of them in Kazakhstan alone). In spite of a lack of government protection and, in the case of Kazakhstan, a bounty on their hides, wolves grow more numerous by the year. The Red Talons guard their Kinfolk jealously from rival tribes, who must rely almost entirely on human Kinfolk to replenish their numbers.

I would go so far as to say that the wolves of Central Asia actually enjoy better lives than many of the humans there. Dictator-presidents use sham elections to legitimize their repressive governments, and anyone who speaks out against them vanishes, often winding up in hard labor

prison camps. It often seems that every government official is corrupt, and local rulers often flout the law without hes­ itation or fear of consequences. Many people are hooked into drug addiction or lured into prostitution. The region also suffers from human trafficking, with victims sent to China, Russia, Iran, or even farther away as slave labor or as food for Wyrm spawn.